It was a great cooking week for Tricia and Nana. The "Barefoot Contessa" (Ina Garten) visited the local Williams Sonoma and we met her and got our cookbooks signed. Hopefully someone will start a blog to cook along with Ina's book as well. Just not on Fridays, since we are "booked" with Dorie......
This was our first blog post/recipe attempt and we thoroughly enjoyed the process as well as the results. Overall the bloggers were raving about this cake. People spoke of making the cake multiple times in a week. With expectations like that, it is almost a recipe for disappointment. We both enjoyed the cake but would not be found making it multiple times in any week. PS- Nana's crust looked gorgeous. She had no fear and cooked for an extra half an hour over the recipe time. I am totally following her way of cooking this the next time....
Nana's Try & Comments:
The apples I used were :
1 Granny Smith, 1 Gala, 1 Golden Delicious and one that was a Crisp apple that had an aroma of Calvados. The flavor was excellent and using the combination of different types definitely created not only a wonderful flavor, but gave the cake an overall homey old fashioned taste and texture since some apples were crisp and others soft.
When using a quantity of 4 apples, it was hard to judge the correct size to use. I think I had too much for the amount of cake batter that was called for, but it turned out beautiful.
Tricia's try & Comments:
1 Granny Smith Apple and 2 "premium HoneyCrisp Washington Apples" from Costco. With all 3 I folded them gently and a little at a time into the batter. I did not add all the apples, after reading the comments and hearing from Nana (who cooked hers first......) that there is usually not alot of batter left.
Ready for the oven. New (but the cheap on ;) 8" springform from Sur La Table.
Out of the oven. Did not use convection but did cook it for longer than the book, which suggested 50-60 minutes. I put it in for 58 to start with, then added another 12 and finally let it stay in another 6 minutes. Then I got scared and figured I could cook it longer in the future but should try to stick to the recipe the first time around.
Survived the springform- with powdered sugar added.
Teeny, compared to Nana's which was cooked in the 9 inch Springform she had. This is sitting on a charger plate- not a dinner plate.
